TDP's projection of Mayawati as PM ''opportunistic'': Goud

Hyderabad, Aug 4 (UNI) The fledgling Nava Telangana Praja Party (NTPP) president T Devender Goud today alleged that Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu's projection of Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati as Prime Minister and calling her a capable leader was ''opportunistic.'' Addressing a press conference here to announce formal launch of the party headquarters here on August 14, he, along with another former Minister E Peddi Reddy, who also quit the TDP to espouse the cause of statehood for Telangana, alleged that when the TDP was an ally of the Samajwadi Party, Mr Naidu had hired a special aircraft to campaign against her in Uttar Pradesh.

After severing ties with the SP, Mr Naidu had found her to be the ''embodiment of all virtues'', he remarked.

The families of the martyrs of the 1969 Telangana agitation would inaugurate his party headquarters, he said, adding that the party's policies and programmes would be announced at a public meet here on August 27.

On his party's tie-up for the next Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the state, he said, ''still there is a lot of time. We have not thought about it now. We want to focus our attention on people's problems and resort to stirs to resolve them.'' Setting a deadline of August 10 for the release of Krishna waters to the Telangana region through the Nagarjunasagar Left Bank Canal, he said, his party would launch a massive agitation in support of farmers, who were facing acute shortage of fertilizers and diesel for their tractors and pumpsets due to the ''wrong policies''of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre and the Congress government in the state.

The NTPP would fight against the Congress's alleged move to privatise the open cast mines of the Singareni Collieries, he added.

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